How It Works
We also have a FAQ.
A bounty always begins by sending the desired bounty ISK to the cBounty.space corporation, with the "Reason" field correctly filled out.
This is the only corporation with a License for Bounty Brokerage Operations. There are no other Licensed Bounty Brokers. Do not send ISK to unlicensed bounty brokers, as cBounty cannot and does not offer any services for those transactions.
A bounty placed this way is refundable at any time upon the customer's request, even if partially earned by a bounty hunter. See Requesting A Refund for more details.
You can give money to the cBounty.space corporation by searching for it in your search bar. When you right-click the result, you are able to give it money.
You can also drag and drop the corporation name into a note, so that you can right-click it later without having to search for it. You won't have to search for it in the future which avoids unlicensed operations from appearing in your search results.
The reason field must begin with "Bounty:" followed by the exact name of any* individual. This allows staff at cBounty.space to automatically process incoming bounties hourly, and cBounty will reflect the customer's bounty once that occurs.
Once the ISK is sent the bounty is live, even if not reflected on cBounty. The engineering department assures that the bandwidth limitations of fluid routing at the busy Jita 4-4 station do not interfere with the Thukker Division's operations.
In this example, a 100,000 ISK bounty would be placed upon Hatsu Okeshimata, a Licensed Bounty Broker at cBounty.
Once the bounty is placed, bounty hunters can submit killmails to earn the customer's bounty. For more details on how fees impact the customer's placed bounty, see Killmail Evaluation.
If the "Reason" field is not filled out properly or there is no capsuleer with the requested name, a refund is automatically created and the bounty is not placed.
*Some restrictions apply, see the FAQ.
That is it! In one hour or less, a customer's bounty will be reflected on cBounty and searchable by bounty hunters.
Earning a bounty always begins with a killmail*. The capsuleer with the final blow is the one who earns the bounty. In the rare case there is no final blow, or an NPC is credited with a final blow, then the capsuleer with the top damage is the one who earns the bounty.
A killmail will be immediately processed if it is older than about an hour, which is the processing cadence of cBounty. If it is younger than an hour, the killmails await processing. Once an hour, here at cBounty.space there are teams of actuaries, economists, and Thukker subject matter experts who processes the bulk paperwork.
cBounty processes hourly to make sure a bounty hunter's killmail has the maximum opportunity to earn bounties, including those bounties recently placed but not yet reflected on cBounty. However, a bounty hunter can't hold onto a killmail and submit it later once the target has a larger bounty. Only the bounties in place at the time of the killmail are eligible to be earned.
*Not every killmail is eligible. To see what restrictions apply, check the FAQ.
The quickest way to submit a killmail is through the "Submit A Killmail Link" service. While in New Eden, go to the Capsuleer Sheet → Interactions → Combat Log, and right click the killmail to have this menu appear. Choose "Copy External Kill Link", and then submit the link to the killmail submission service.
Alternatively, an "Automated Killmail Upload" service is available. Prospective bounty hunters can log in and grant killmail scopes so cBounty can periodically scrape their killmails. The scrape occurs hourly, and automates the "Submit A Killmail Link" service. cBounty potentially makes public all killmails scraped this way: kills and losses. If this is not desired, the "Submit A Killmail Link" service remains available.
cBounty is proud to offer prospective bounty hunters choices in the killmail services available to cater to each individual's needs. There is no requirement to give cBounty killmail scopes to participate.
Killmail processing and evaluation is interesting in its own right, and Killmail Evaluation illustrates this process. Those details are for later and the process continues with the earned ISK.
Once the killmail has been processed and capsuleer bounties have been earned, the ISK is credited to a bounty hunter's account here at cBounty. The ISK displayed in the account is 100% backed by real ISK at all times. To move the ISK from a cBounty account to a character's wallet, simply request a bounty payout.
To request a bounty payout, the bounty hunter that earned the bounty (final blow) needs to log in. This does not require any scopes. Scopes are never a requirement to use cBounty services. Once logged in, the home page will have an option to request a payout of all bounties. The bounty hunter does not need to submit a request for each bounty earned as the entire lump sum of ISK in the cBounty account is being requested.
Within three to five Caldari business days a Licensed Bounty Broker will send the ISK directly to the bounty hunter's wallet.
Getting paid for killmails is as easy as submitting them. The frictionless payout system delivers upon request.
All unpaid bounties placed with cBounty are eligible for refunds. Partially paid bounties are refunded the appropriate outstanding remainder.
cBounty understands that capsuleers change their minds, come to private agreements, are able to resolve concerns, and make mistakes when requesting bounty placement. These reasons are why cBounty unconditionally offers refunds as a service. For these same reasons, a refund request is able to be cancelled and the bounty immediately reinstated.
Please note that requesting a refund is subject to a fee, and the fee is not reimbursed should the request be cancelled.
To request a refund, log in to the cBounty account. This does not require any scopes. Scopes are never a requirement to use cBounty services. The personal account page has links to the placed bounties. A customer can request refunds for individual bounties, or for every bounty the customer has left outstanding.
Once a bounty's refund has been requested, the bounty is immediately removed and becomes ineligible for earning. It is sent to the Accounting Department for processing, and if they are deep in processing refund it may no longer be cancellable.
Within three to five Caldari business days a Licensed Bounty Broker will send the refunded ISK directly to the customer's wallet.
Easy refunds grants gives customers the peace of mind that bounties are a secure, useful tool when conducting private affairs.
Killmail evaluation is a complex process, and capsuleers do not need to know the details to use cBounty. The below is provided for transparency for those capsuleers who are extremely diligent.
A killmail evaluation is the elaborate process that takes a killmail and attempts to satisfy customers' outstanding bounties on the target in a fair and proportionate manner. cBounty accomplishes this in a conventional three-step method: determining the total value of a killmail, determining its bounty value, and then fulfilling customers' bounties up to the bounty value.
Each of these steps produces an ISK value, and these detailed numbers are made public. However, only the final value is used when earning a bounty. The rest are provided for transparency.
Fees are applied in the third step. Fulfilling customers' bounties is the service cBounty provides: connecting customers with bounty hunters. Both customers and bounty hunters each pay one fee. This is the only fee when a bounty is earned.
To determine the value of a killmail, cBounty uses the methodology pioneered by zKillboard. While the methods are the same, the underlying data powering them is not. There may be discrepancies in the final value of the killmail due to the underlying data difference.
Additionally, the value of killmails is more time-sensitive for bounty hunting. The source of market history data to evaluate items is unreliable. While zKillboard can back-calculate killmail values once data is available again, cBounty can neither travel back in time to reissue ISK nor delay providing services until the historical data is available again.
For these reasons, cBounty has a novel alternative fallback method to determine an item's price when reliable market history data is scarce. It is transparent when this occurs and may also be a source of discrepancy when comparing to zKillboard.
Once the value of a killmail is determined, its bounty value is computed. The bounty value is less than the total value. This is because of the market forces between customer and bounty hunter, and cBounty balancing its service to each.
The destruction must be meaningful to the customer who placed the bounty. Otherwise, targets can readily clear their own bounty for very little cost, devaluing the bounty hunting services provided. This involves adjustments to ship values based on insurance prices, and determining a payout rate of less than 100% for items destroyed.
Additionally, RMTers ruin everything. The cBounty service will not be used to facilitate RMT ISK transfers and this is aggressively monitored and enforced.
The above may be disappointing to prospective bounty hunters who would rather payouts be 100% of the computed destroyed value. To offset this, cBounty offers an extremely modest bonus/insurance by providing an extremely low payout rate for items dropped regardless whether the grid could be looted.
Once the bounty value is determined, the Accounting Department matches it against customers' bounties in a round-robin, fair manner. Each customer's bounty takes a turn paying out 1 ISK until all have done so, and then it repeats until the bounty value is met. Only the bounties available at the time of the killmail are considered and any bounties placed after the killmail are ignored. If multiple customers have placed various bounties and the killmail exhausts some of them, the remaining bounties continue to pay out in a round-robin fashion until the bounty value is met or all bounties are exhausted.
After this process, fees are levied on the customer and bounty hunter. The fee due from the bounty hunter is straightforward: a small part of their payout is retained as a fee.
The customer fee looks at the remainder of a customer's bounty ISK after paying out the bounty hunter. The customer's fee due is proportional to their individual bounty payout, not the total payout of the killmail. If ten customers contribute one tenth of the total payout then each customer has a fee on their one-tenth share.
If the customer has unearned bounty ISK left over, the fee is paid from their outstanding bounty.
If there is no more ISK because the bounty hunter's killmail exhausted the customer's bounty, no fee is due from the customer. This can happen when a customer places a very small bounty and the killmail bounty value is very large. The decision to levy no fee favors both the customer, who gets the service for free, and for the bounty hunter: trying to account for this edge case would negatively impact their payout.
All of this is an automatic process provided to customers and bounty hunters. Two receipts are produced and made public. One receipt shows the computation of the bounty value, and the second receipt records the fulfillment of bounty payout and fees levied.